Arden bendler- browning

ARTIST STATEMENT

Everyday life in and around the city, heavily influenced by my role as a homeschooling mother situated in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods in the city, has been the common thread throughout the evolutions of my work for the last several years. I have witnessed my city's growth alongside the different phases of parenting which have positioned my own steps, directions, and tempo. I am constantly snatching photographs of textures, contrasts, color and light while going somewhere with my children (or being stuck at home), or keeping one eye on them and another on capturing the world as it exists around us in that second. Like the history shaping the urban environment which has long informed my work, my personal history and location is a significant and relevant filter.

The visual phenomena I encounter at home and in transit are my evolving and developing source of visual vocabulary. The stark contrast between the light and vast sky (that envelops my upper level living space through intentionally huge windows) and the wheatpasted/dug up/dirty/fenced off/leafy/cluttered city streets where I walk and drive with my children informs a dueling viewpoint of my world.

I have a terrible sense of direction, yet I crave travel to new places. Painting provides a similar thrill as traveling to a new place. By searching for something previously unknown, I reference familiar everyday landmarks and waypoints, while simultaneously riding a wave of disorientation. I do not plan a specific outcome. Brushstrokes, whether drawn carefully or quickly wiped across a surface are also visceral gobs of rich color. The urban landscape carries a related quality; as full of activity as it is, its many intricacies and perspectives are impossible to fully comprehend.

Persistent anxiety about time and memory has translated into obsessive documenting everyday moments via the omnipresent smartphone camera. The downsizing of the lived expanse and enlarging from the handheld lens is a fitting mirror to the peculiar shifts between real and virtual, physical/natural and artifice which sharply colors our communal reality at this point in time. By combining elements from all facets of my perception via the distilled and distorted nature of snapshot digital photography (and the compression of image upon image available through social media feeds), my paintings reflect the current obsession with being everywhere at once and squeezing an abundance of information into a compact presentation.

I look at my endless flow of digital photographs in my hand as I paint, merging elements from many different sources to create something new and unexpected, yet referencing a feeling of place, time, and movement.

BIOGRAPHY

Bendler Browning’s works are included in several public collections including the West Collection, the Pennsylvania Convention Center, PNC Tower, and numerous private collections. Her work has been represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery since 2011, through which her work has been included in Art Miami, Art Silicon Valley, and Dallas Art Fair. Bendler Browning’s works have been featured in New American Paintings twice (2009 & 2013), Philadelphia Style Magazine, The Morning News, the artblog, polisblog, Philadelphia Inquirer, Icon Magazine, Atlanta Journal-Constutition, and Drawing Magazine, among others. She has been featured in exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Arlington Arts Center, Swarthmore College, Delaware Contemporary, Kutztown University, and the James A. Michener Museum. A commissioned permanent work for the City of Philadelphia at the Philadelphia International Airport, awarded through a rigorous competition and selection process, was recently completed in early 2017. Bendler Browning holds a BFA in Art with honors from Carnegie Mellon University (1997), a Master of Studio Art with high distinctions from Sydney College of the Arts/University of Sydney (2000), and an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art/Temple University (2003). She studied abroad at Temple University Rome as an undergraduate in 1996 as well as a graduate student in 2003.